The Third Party Transfer Program: A Tool Buffalo Can Use to Reduce Property Abandonment

Buffalo needs an effective program to quickly fight abandonment. In the past twenty years, Buffalo’s tax-foreclosure abandonment rate has increased. If the City does not sell these abandoned properties or at it’s an annual In-rem auction, then it generally takes title to them, selling a small number and putting the rest on the City’s long demolition list. This leaves the City to maintain many unsold dilapidated properties that drain City resources and decrease property value in their neighborhoods. The current processes are slow and do not adequately address the abandonment problem

Off-Line, Multi-Detector Intensity Interferometers II: Implications and Applications

Intensity interferometry removes the stringent requirements on mechanical precision and atmospheric corrections that plague all amplitude interferometry techniques at the cost of severely limited sensitivity. A new idea we recently introduced, very high redundancy, alleviates this problem. It enables the relatively simple construction (~1cm mechanical precision) of a ground-based astronomical facility able to transform a two-dimensional field of point-like sources to a three-dimensional distribution of micro-arcsec resolved systems, each imaged in several optical bands. Each system will also have its high resolution residual timing, high quality (inside each band) spectra and light curve, emergent flux, effective temperature, polarization effects and perhaps some thermodynamic properties, all directly measured. All the above attributes can be measured in a single observation run of such a dedicated facility. We conclude that after three decades of abandonment optical intensity interferometry deserves another review, also as a ground-based alternative to the science goals of space interferometers.Comment: The article has been accepted for publication in MNRA

The PUSH Green Development Zone, Building Housing Equity from the Ground Up

2008 marks the year that PUSH Buffalo founded the Green Development Zone in Buffalo’s West Side. Encompassing 25 square blocks, the Green Development Zone (GDZ) is an area that PUSH is making more environmentally and economically sustainable.1 PUSH stands for People United for Sustainable Housing, and it is a non-profit corporation that uses a unique combination of community organizing, policy advocacy, and neighborhood redevelopmen

CRIMES - VENUE- NON-SUPPORT, ABANDONMENT, AND DESERTION

Defendant was divorced by his wife in A county in 1926. In 1929, defendant was indicted for non-support of his children, in B county, where his former wife and the children had maintained their home since the divorce. An objection to the venue was raised by the defense, on the ground that, if a crime was committed, it was consummated in A county, where defendant had been living during the time he was charged with non-support. Held, that the venue of non-support is where that support should be rendered. State v. Anderson (Or. 1930) 290 Pac. 190

Bird taxonomic and functional responses to land abandonment in wood-pastures

Wood-pastures are socio-ecological systems covering vast areas in Europe. Although used for grazing and production of various forest goods, wood-pastures harbour a rich biodiversity and are usually considered as High Nature Value Farmlands. However, socio-economic pressures are driving the transformation of these valuable landscapes from multi-functional, heterogeneous habitats to homogeneous areas through either intensification or land abandonment. We investigated how changes in management intensity influence the taxonomic diversity, functional diversity and functional composition of birds in these landscapes using generalized linear models. In contrast to taxonomic diversity, functional diversity decreased significantly towards shrub-dominated and less heterogeneous areas related to the abandonment of grazing and/or understory management practices. Grassland and generalist species, and associated guilds such as granivores, ground-nesters and ground-foragers are almost absent less managed areas. On the other hand, shrub-dominated areas favour forest species, particularly understory/canopy foragers and arboreal nesters, although the forest guild is still well-represented in actively managed, heterogeneous areas. Our results indicate the abandonment of wood-pasture management affects the prevalence of grassland and generalist species, leading to functional diversity loss and potentially reduced ecosystem functioning. We suggest non-intensive, active management is needed to maintain habitat heterogeneity and canopy openness, enhancing trait diversity in wood-pastures.Peer reviewe

Contrasting multi-taxa diversity patterns between abandoned and non-intensively managed forests in the southern Dolomites

The abandonment of silvicultural activities can lead to changes in species richness and composition of biological communities, when compared to those found in managed forests. The aim of this study was to compare the multi-taxonomical diversity of two mature silver fir-beech-spruce forests in the southern Dolomites (Italy), corresponding to the European Union habitat type 9130. The two sites share similar ecological and structural characteristics, but differ in their recent management histories. In the last 50 years, one site underwent non-intensive management, while the other was left unmanaged and was included in a forest reserve. The species richness and composition of eight taxa were surveyed in the two sites between 2009 and 2011. The difference in mean species richness between the two forest management types was tested through permutation tests, while differences in species composition were tested by principal coordinates analysis and the permutational multivariate analysis of variance. Mean species richness of soil macrofungi, deadwood lichens, bark beetles, and longhorn beetles were significantly higher in the abandoned than in the non-intensively managed forests. Deadwood fungi and epiphytic lichens did not differ in mean species richness between the two study sites, while mean species richness of ground beetles and birds were higher in the non-intensively managed than in the abandoned forest. Significant differences in species composition between the two sites were found for all the taxa, except for longhorn beetles. These results indicate that improving forest landscape heterogeneity through the creation of a mosaic of abandoned and extensively managed forests should better fulfill the requirements of ecologically different taxa

Psychoanalyzing Nature, Dark Ground of Spirit

The ontological paradigms of Schelling and the late Merleau-Ponty bear striking resemblances to Spinoza’s ontology. Both were developed in response to transcendental models of a Cartesian mold, resisting tendencies to exalt the human ego to the neglect or the detriment of the more-than-human world. As such, thinkers with environmental concerns have sought to derive favorable ethical prescriptions on their basis. We begin by discerning a deadlock between two such thinkers: Ted Toadvine and Sean McGrath. With ecological responsibility in mind, both actually resist Spinozist reduction of the human being to the status of a mere mode among modes. But despite having the same general aim, they end up endorsing contrary practical conclusions. Our objective is to pinpoint the reasons behind this deadlock, indicative of two strands of post-Spinozist environmental thought which stand in tension, and to begin to propose an integrative way forward. The ethical weight afforded by Toadvine to the notion of resistance in the work of the late Merleau-Ponty, namely nature’s resistance to harmonizing, unifying pretensions, invites inquiry into two Merleau-Pontean notions he does not address: the barbarian principle, and the proposal to “Do a Psychoanalysis of Nature.” We trace these to their origins in the works of Schelling’s middle period, arguing that the Schellingian location of resistance in Spirit’s dark ground—alternately conceived as primordial Dionysiac madness, bottled-up within the substratum of consciousness—lends to an understanding of the human, and human responsibility, that harbors favorable implications for environmental ethics

From “Old Left” to “New Labour”? Eric Hobsbawm and the Rhetoric of “Realistic Marxism”

The rise of Tony Blair and “New Labour” has generally been understood as the result of the 18-year-long hegemony of Conservative Party rule under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, from 1979 until 1997, wherein the Labour Party was forced to make fundamental changes to its program and values, ditching shibboleths and apparently “unpopular” policies, to make itself again electable. This process, however, involved deepening divisions within the party until the defeat of the Labour Left and the rise of “New Labour.” The latter’s takeover of the Labour Party could not have happened without the abandonment or modification of its traditional policies. It was the debate launched over the significance of Labour’s loss of the general election in June 1983, the second out of four successive electoral defeats between 1979 and 1992, which became the fulcrum of division across the Left, and not just within the Labour Party. It is from this particular historical conjuncture that we can see the opening up of what would become the path towards New Labour as the debate led to the “rethinking” and “realignment” of the Left and the abandonment of many of the traditional objectives of “Old Labour.” The debate brought out intense struggles within both the Labour and Communist parties, and their subsequent loss of thousands of members. It is the process, however, which has not been understood and the role of individuals who have contributed to that process: Eric Hobsbawm and the rhetoric of “realistic Marxism.

Family Law 1961 Survey of New York Law: Part Four: Torts and Family Law

Legislation designed to enable prompt judicial supervision of private adoptions was the most significant advance in domestic relations law this year. The legislature also subjected the contracts and earnings of infants engaged in professional activities to judicial control. Notable Court of Appeals decisions granted an annulment for constructive abandonment through refusal of sexual relations, denied an injunction against divorce proceedings in a foreign nation, and refused to abrogate the old rule against actions in tort by a child against his parent. Probably the most notorious case of the year was the action for debauchery brought by an eighteen-year-old plaintiff against the estate of the late Errol Flynn, whose exploits were apparently much more spectacular off the screen than on it. Correctly dismissing the action as one in the nature of heart balm relief, Justice Hofstadter unleashed an invective condemning the current social malaise ... especially virulent in the area of entertainment, catering to sadism and violence and adolescent eroticism, and suggesting that perhaps a remedy of social ostracism may have to be used where legal sanction proves insufficient